Swandives

The running season is in full swing again, so expect Swandives to become somewhat of a jog blog while I attempt to motivate myself to pound the pavement. I am really struggling this season. Today I managed 9 km, which sounds like a lot, but I am so slow people can walk faster! I kid you not, it took me an hour and 20 minutes! Where did all that hard work from last season go? I feel very discouraged.

Been offline a bit this week - namely because we upgraded our broadband connection, triggering a cascade of technical issues. Modem wasn’t configured for new speedier connection, ISP said it was, upgraded firmware, that failed, rang technical support three times, eventually put my foot down and made ISP send us a new modem, setup tool didn’t work with our operating system so had to configure manually. Very frustrating, and I’m reasonably cluey on technical matters - I still think the level of service provided by ISPs in Australia leaves a lot to be desired. Some are good, but most are bad. It’s a sad indictment when you come to expect dodgy levels of customer service as being ‘normal’ but that’s technology for you. Also, being technically literate can be very frustrating when you call tech support - I hate it when I know more than the other person on the end of the line (largely because I know how little I actually know).

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that the internet’s working and it’s way faster than anything we’ve had before - even if it’s still at the lower parametres of the accepted speed. And by far the best upshot of it all is that Joost, a program I have tried to run on various systems for at least 12 months, now works on my computer! I never thought I’d see the day. Now all my schlock TV needs have been met and I’m one very happy camper. More than 400 channels and 20,000 shows, most of which I’ll never bother watching because they’re pretty dire. But why would you bother with pay-TV, which is essentially the same thing? I have seen the future, and I like it!

So it’s the last day for voting and I head over to the YouTube awards channel. And, pretty much at random, I click on Randy Pausch’s ‘Last Lecture’ in the inspirational category. In recent times I have found I get a lot out of inspirational stories, even though in the past I may have dismissed it all as sentimental and therefore somehow unworthy of being useful. At about one and a quarter hours long, this YouTube clip is waaay above the commonly accepted two minute timeline for web video. But it’s worth every. single. minute. Randy Pausch is a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, but that’s only part of the story. If ever there was a lecture that defined inspiration, this is it.

I’m noddling around on the internet (I tend to noodle when TV viewing is bad which, sadly, is fairly regularly these days) and I find the most amazing pictures I have seen in ages. Apologies if this is old news to you or if you’re in any way easily grossed out.

It’s the story of a enormous sperm whale carcass that, for various reasons, ended up on the back of a truck in Taiwan in 2004, according to the website, Truck Spills. Unfortunately, it had a little accident and exploded. Warning: it’s seriously disgusting and, like a car crash, you just can’t help but look.

http://www.truckspills.com/whale_spill.html

OK, so I think the original ICHC site is still the best, but was cruising around at lunchtime on the interwebs, saw this, and had to post it.

see more loldogs are funny dog pictures!

It’s funny how one piece of music can instantly transform you to a previous time and place with an intensity that is so full-on it’s like all your senses were on overload; smell, taste, colour, every detail like it was digitally captured in your mind for all posterity. No fuzzy analogue involved.

So it is for the Screaming Trees album, Dust. Sure, in 1996 the Grunge musical movement was in its death throes but it remains, Nevermind notwithstanding, *the* album of the Seattle sound.

Funnily enough, my digital memory moment is not actually from the nineties. It’s from 2003 when, newly married and on what remains the best holiday of my life in North West Australia, the beloved and I drove from Exmouth to Shark Bay. A honeymoon remembered for its blue, blue skies, rich red soil, sunsets to match, a long straight road punctuated every few miles by the odd dead kangaroo carcass and massive, massive roadtrain. We crossed a wide brown country that I had lived in all my life but never truly known in a white Nissan X-trail with The Screaming Trees blaring and the wind in our hair. And when I hear Dust I see, with utter clarity, a majestic wedge-tailed eagle taking off in front of us from the side of the road. It will remain with me forever.

So a sound that typifies a rainy American city reminds me of something uniquely Australian. It’s a paradox that explains why I love music, and why it endures.

We went to see Charlie Wilson’s War at the cinema the other day. It was a lunchtime screening, which provided me with the perfect excuse to eat popcorn! The beloved doesn’t eat popcorn so the larger menu options just aren’t necessary, but he does drink the cola so we share a large cup between the two of us.

There is one problem with this cosy arrangement.

For some really bizarre reason, a large cola and a medium popcorn costs more than a large cola and a large popcorn ‘combo’. So in order to save myself 65 cents, I went with the large option.

Check out the size of that bucket! And in what mad universe does more food cost less than less food? I even asked the girl behind the counter if I could pay for the large combo and just get the smaller popcorn AND SHE SAID NO. And they wonder why more than 50% of Australians are overweight.